Extending the Existing Roof Outside on a Porch Area

May 9, 2012

Jared. Let’s go to Raymond in Port St. John. You’re In the House, go ahead brother.

Raymond. My question was in regards to extending the existing roof outside on a porch area. We currently have the aluminum ceiling put in there, but I didn’t know it gets really hard and loud when the rain comes down and so—

Jared. So, are you wanting to close that area in or you just wanted to make that roof that’s there bigger?

Raymond. The idea was to make it part of the house. Maybe create a wall around it, that’s why I wanted to do the roof extended there.

Jared. So, Raymond has an existing patio area. It has what he called a mental or aluminum roof. Chances are it’s going to be what we call an aluminum pan roof, it’s a porch area and like most of those porch areas they’re quite unusable when it gets to the degree that it is today, which is hot. So he wants to close that area in and make it part of the house. Did I explain that right Raymond?

Jared. Okay. So, what you have right now is going to be what we consider a nonpermanent structure. So, it’s going have a concrete slab and then most of the time it’s going to have an aluminum kind of structural wall. Sometimes it can have some screening there and then the top area is going to be aluminum. Usually there’s going to be seam every 12 inches, it’s called an aluminum pan roof. Sometimes if there’s a seam every 4 feet, it’s called a structural panel; which is called Elite and is the most common. Those areas are great in times where it’s not very hot outside, but the moment that it gets hot they’re pretty unusable. I’ve been seeing a lot of people wanting to get rid of those and then close that area in to add some additional square footage to their home. Now this is considered a structural change to the house. You can do it, but you have to have a set of plans. Those plans have to be stamped by a structural engineer. This is as if you are doing any other sort of addition at your house.

Ken. Hey Raymond, what were you planning that room to be?

Raymond. Basically an addition to the house, just making the area bigger. We have a French door that opens to that area and usually it’s open and it just heats up the whole house right away.

Ken. Sure. So, the idea is to make that room just bigger then, because the reason I ask that is because — it’s very important — because you can’t enter a room or have a room that doesn’t have egress, in another words fire protection. You couldn’t have a bedroom so to speak there…

Jared. Yeah, this is one of the things that do come into play. When you have an existing patio, if you have any bedrooms that are along that back section, if you’re going to close this area in you have to make sure that all of those bedrooms have egress, a way to get out of them to the outside wall. So, this is one of the things that we have to take into consideration when we do these exterior patio additions. We’re doing three of them right now. A lot of times, what we have to do is we frame those exterior walls either with block or wood frame. Usually the concrete, we have to bring up to the same height as what the rest of the house is.

Ken. Typically those areas will have a slope bond to get the water away. They are 3 or 4 inches lower in that area; that all has to be brought up and it has to be the same height as the interior house. You have to have a permit and you have to get an engineer in and all that.

Jared. This is not something that is typically a do-it-yourself type of project. Usually you would want to hire a contractor to do this type of work, just because it is pretty involved.

Jared. If you are thinking about doing some sort of addition to your house, whether it’s a back patio or maybe you’re thinking about doing some sort of remodel and adding some square footage, putting a second story on, doing an addition. Your house isn’t quite large enough for your family or maybe you’re thinking about just closing in a patio like Raymond was, we are building contractors and we would be honored to help you in that process. We have interior designers on staff that can help with design part of it and we’ll be happy to come out take a look at it. We give free estimates and then the remodel project we do from start to finish.